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ADDRESS 



OF THE 



HON. JOSEPH R. CfiAHDLER, 



AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE 



aitbitig M tlje liljrims 



OF MARYLAND, 



AT TH^SITE OF ST. MARVT'S CITY, 



31ttti) I5t0, 1855. 



PUaMSHED FOR THE CATHOLIC IVSTITUTE AND THE YOUNG CATH0LIC3> 
FRIH\D SOCIETY, OF BALTIMORE. 



BALTIMORE: 

HEDIAN & O'BRIEN, PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS, 

No. 82 Baltimore Street. 



ADDEESS. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : 

The desire to make commemoration of distinguished 
favors, is among the best impulses of the human heart. 
The justification of the desire has marked domestic, so- 
cial and even national movements in all ages ; and has 
had for its sanction not only the spirit of purest gratitude 
for the benefits of the past, but a hope of connecting the 
favors and the spirit they suggest with the future. 

" Gratitude," says a French satirist, " is a strong sense 
of favors to come," and the apothegm conveys more of 
truth than at first flush it seems to imply ; and, correctly 
received, it has less that is offensive than at first strikes 
the ear, or perhaps was intended by the author. 

Nothing merely present deeply concerns a human be- 
ing. His nature, his instincts, his impulses, lead him to 
look away from the present and connect himself with the 
realities of the past, to strengthen his hopes and his en- 
joyments for the future. This is no accident of position, 
it is the gift of God. "He made us with such large dis- 
course looking before and after." 

Scarcely a festival, domestic or national, among the 
Hebrews was unconnected with the past. Gratitude for 
special providences, or sorrows for pecuhar offences, were 
the motives for the feasts and fasts of the chosen people ;. 
and the sanctity of the weekly Sabbath was commemo- 
rativ of the rest of the Most High. Their passovers 



preserved the recollection of the sparing mercies of God 
towards the male born of their tribes in Egypt, and their 
Purim kept bright the remembrances of salvation from 
the destructive edict of the Assyrian monarch. 

Year by year pagan nations, pagan municipalities, and 
pagan individuals, made memorial of important events. 
Marathon, Leiictra^ Thermopylae, were remembered, and 
the obligations of the present and the hopes of the fu- 
ture, were cemented with the illustrious past. It was the 
great work of the orator and the poet to leave the lustre 
of eloquence and song upon the loftiest deeds of the de- 
parted, and it was the delight and honor of an admiring 
people to mark the names of the mighty dead, as they 
left the shadows of the past, to grow lustrous in the praise 
and gratitude of the present. As the summit peaks of 
the mountains are kept visible and beautiful by the post- 
humous rays of that sun which has gone to enlighten 
other worlds. 

But I have said that gratitude for the past connects it- 
self with the enjoyments of the present and the hopes of 
the future. No event deserves special commemoration 
that does not appeal to the present for evils avoided or 
benefits secured ; and that anniversary which is not sanc- 
tified by the commemoration of what belongs to the pre- 
sent and relates to the future, is unworthy of general or 
individual observance. 

We commemorate to-day the landing in 1634 of the 
emigrants from Great Britain on the very spot on which 
we stand. Their advent has been deemed of consequence 
sufficient for special memorial. In these times, every day 
brings to our coast more than a thousand European emi- 
o-rants, who are crowding our cities, peopling our plains, 
felling our forests, swelhng our commerce and augmenting 
our national resources and national importance. Let the 
future commemorate the benefits which they shall have 
derived from these their ancestors. But to-day the shad- 



ows of the past are entered, and the arrival of only two 
boat loads of men, women and children is selected for a 
commemoration in which science and the arts, patriotism 
and religion are deemed to have an interest. What claim 
have the immigration and colonization of Calvert and his 
followers — men, women, children — upon our gratitude for 
a commemoration ? Is it that we have descended from 
the stock of these educated, high-minded and generous 
emigrants, and would do honor to the families of which 
we are a part ? Probably not half of this assembly can 
trace their ancestral line to any of that company. Is it 
that these Pilgrims fled away from rehgious persecution 
at home and thus became confessors in the cause of 
Christian truth ? Why, almost every one of the original 
colonies of this country, owes its foundation to the same 
spirit of religious intolerance on one side and religious in- 
dependence on the other. Massachusetts, Rhode Island 
and Pennsylvania present strong instances of attachment 
to creeds, and of sacrifices for their free enjoyment. Is 
it that they, who fled from intolerance at home and sought 
religious liberty here, were of our own creed, and thus 
appeal to our denominational sympathies for grateful re- 
membrance and ceremonious commemoration ? 

We may safely say, as members of that church of which 
these immigrants formed a part, that mere endurance of 
persecution for conscience sake is too general for special 
commemoration ; and the bare profession of Catholicity 
is no enforcement of an appeal to perpetual distinction. 

Religion — Christianity — is a personal concern with each 
individual, and man adopts and practices it for his own 
salvation. He endures the present for the sake of its 
effect on his own future, and he may abide amid the em- 
barrassments and fears of legal persecutions in a belief 
that it is more endurable than the perils of removal. Or 
he may hasten to hide himself away from the storm in the 
hope of reaching and enjoying the sunshine and calm of a 
situation that is exempted from those annoyances. 



6 

Ijoes he confess or does he apostatize amid antagonistic 
influences ? his confession or his apostacy is his own, and 
the greatest consequences are his. Thousands amid the 
terrors of early pagan persecution, gave fortune and hfe 
for the faith they professed, and many shrunk from the an- 
guish of the torture and the terrors of the amphitheatre. 
Neither party, from the simple act appeals to us for a com- 
memoration of its proceedings. The strength of faith and 
the hopes of immortal salvation vi^ere the prevaihng mo- 
tives, with one portion ; and weakness that makes the 
present hide the mighty future, prevailed with the other, 
In both cases personal feelings and views, attachments to 
the present or trust to the future, merely individual con- 
siderations, predominated, and if unconnected with subse- 
quent events, by direct operations or by indirect influence, 
none of those martyrs or apostates have a claim upon con- 
sideration beyond their bare connection with the history of 
the times of which they constitute a part. 

And consideredonly asof and forIthemselves,the pilgrims 
of St. Mary's, though demanding our admiration for purity 
of character, loftiness of purpose, and clear, well defined 
sense of justice in their aims ; yet considered as only for 
themselves and their own times, these pilgrims entitled 
themselves to no special commemoration, and they estab- 
lished, as certainly they preferred, no claim upon the grati- 
tude of succeeding ages. The past and the present must be 
concerned to give character or eflect to a public celebration. 

Who does not feel that the great current of human 
events gives to the latter the influences and character of 
the former ages, and the present catches and displays the 
characteristics of the past, as the lower waters of the Mis- 
sissippi owe a portion of their quality and their depth to 
the sources and the streams above .? 

The claim of the past upon the present is thus founded 
on the beneficial influences of the former on the latter ; 
and the propriety and importance of the celebration of 



this day are referable to what the celebrants most value 
in what the celebrated mtended and performed. 

It will be my aim on the present occasion to invite and 
lead you to a consideration of a certain important and 
distinguishing characteristic in the early movements of 
the colony of Maryland ; and I shall, perhaps, incidentally 
institute a comparison of the conduct, laws and customs 
of some of the other colonies with those of Lord Balti- 
more, especially with regard to the influences of creed 
upon the pursuits of the colonists ; of the effect of that 
creed upon their treatment of the aboriginal inhabitants, 
the owners and occupants of the soil, which the colonists 
desired to possess, and above all, because connected with 
the motives which influenced their emigration from Eu- 
rope ; the effect of that creed on the regulations and 
enactments of the executive and legislative bodies of those 
colonists, with regard to the freedom of worship by diflfer- 
ent denominations, and the entire poUtical and social 
equality of men of diflferent religious creeds. 

I shall endeavor also to institute an inquiry as to the 
connection between the character of our present form of 
national government, its exclusions and protections, and 
the plans and objects of those who were the founders of 
the colony whence sprung the State of Maryland. 

As patriots loving our country above all countries ; as 
philanthropists feeling for man in every relation of life, 
and respecting the rights of man, however they may be 
exposed to injury or neglect ; as Christians believing in 
the doctrines and loving the example of the Founder of our 
creed, and as Catholics interested in all that concerns the 
history of our church, and all that illustrates its graces and 
its influences, the inquiry is one of deep concern, and we 
have only to lament that the time and the peculiarity of 
the celebration allow only a hasty reference to the great 
and most salient points of consideration, and compel us to 
refer to future celebrations and more accompHshed ora- 



8 

tors the completion of a task that as much concerns the 
future as the present — a task ahvays growing. 

Who shall record the whole glories, the sufferings and 
triumphs of the Church of Christ? Who shall make 
mention of the experience of its members, which is that 
Church's history here, its glories and its merits hereafter ? 
Who shall declare all the progress of that religion which, 
rising on imperial pagan Rome, sustained the shock of its 
public contempt and the terrible infliction of its hatred, 
tamed the wild beasts of the amphitheatre, shamed the 
persecutors till it poured its influence over their hearts ; 
moulded them to Christian graces and prepared them for 
those high responsibihties as Christians which they might 
not have incurred as heathens, responsibilities that 
brought down the pagan hordes upon the mistress of the 
conquered world and gave her to desolation and ruin ; — 
that religion which paused in awe amid the inflictions 
which a just God had sent, and while the infidel victor 
was fining the palaces of the Csesars, or stalking among 
the ruins of pagan pride and Christian ingenuity, conquer- 
ed the conqueror and led captivity captive, sending back 
the ruthless invaders, missionaries of Christian truth and 
Christian peace ? This is a theme that demands the 
inspiration of poetry to begin on earth, and which the 
redeemed will perpetuate in heaven. 

The course which I am about to pursue, though it will 
not admit, and, I hope, will not be regarded as requiring 
much attention to order, is favorable to a candid investi- 
gation of the subject, inasmuch as it calls for a judgment 
upon the character and motives of a people, a judgment 
to be founded on their earliest public acts with regard to 
others, and especially their legislation for themselves, and 
for those who might come into connection with them by 
commerce, war, social intercourse, or political relations. 

The history of the planting of the colony of Maryland 
is within the reach of all ; its events must be so famihar 



to most of you, that I shall not occupy my time with even 
such an abstract thereof as would, under ordinary circum- 
stances, be deemed necessary to a proper understanding 
of the course of the argument. I shall suppose you 
familiar with the record, and hence I shall rarely quote, 
except in support of a direct assertion. 

The philosophical historian or the careful observer of 
events in nations must be often struck with the fidelity 
with which the early laws of a people become the expo- 
nents of their views and feelings. Those laws originate 
rather in their authors' general train of thought than in 
any particular circumstances or requirements of the people. 
They are often made to prevent difficulties of which the 
anticipation is due rather to the habits of people's minds, 
than to events that really occur ; or if they are suggested 
by errors or wants at home, those errors or wants spring 
naturally from the mode of thinking common to the people. 

Later laws are made to suit a state of society that is 
consequent upon enlarged intercourse, rival efforts and 
emulous minds. They prevent or correct evils that could 
scarcely have come from the simplicity of early associa- 
tion, and present less the real state of a community than 
a portion of the inconveniences and evils to which that 
community has been exposed by age, and enlarged asso- 
ciation. These later laws denote the extent of trade, the 
change of manners anti the necessities of a mixed com- 
munity. They seem to be a sort of estimate of what good 
qualities a people ought to have, by providing punishment 
for the evil qualities which they exhibit ; while the earlier 
enactments speak the general feelings and wishes and 
denote the exact state of the community. The enactments 
of older society show what effect vice or error has had 
upon the general morals, while the laws of a young commu-* 
nity bear testimony to the influences of the religious 
creed. The late enactments show the deficiency of the 
moral code ; the former, the suggestions of the religious 
sentiment. 



10 

We have an opportunity to judge of the character of the 
St. Mary colonists by their trade with the Indians, and their 
legislation with regard to that people whose existence and 
rights seem to have been a stumbling-block to most of the 
colonies. 

The acquisition of territory by the various bodies of col- 
onists was made by different modes; sometimes by means 
that suited the peculiar character of the purchaser, some- 
times in a manner that denoted the estimate in which the 
seller was held by the purchaser. Sometimes a distribu- 
tion of miserable trinkets sent away the uninformed savage 
to comprehend at his leisure the entire alienation of his fields 
and hunting grounds, and the utter worthlessness of the 
finery which he had received in exchange — finery which, 
with barbaric taste, he had associated with the display and 
dignity of his seignorial rights, but which became utterly 
useless when he found that he had bartered away the reali- 
ties of power for the worthless insignia of condition. 

Others debased the appetite of the aborigines, and then 
ministered to their morbid cravings, till the poor wretches 
became maddened with the liquid fire and exposed them- 
selves to the visitations of vengeance that thinned their 
number and confiscated their possessions. 

Others made treaties which they could scarcely believe — 
which probably they did not hope — would be observed by 
the native party to the compact; and swept the tribe with 
exterminating vengeance for the violation of agreements that 
had in them neither reason nor right ; a vengeance that 
stretched the first reached offenders dead upon their lordly 
paternal possessions; and dragged the fugitives from their 
fastnesses to be sold into foreign slavery. 

Christianity was made terrible to these worshipers of 
#the Great Spirit, by the vindictiveness of its professors, who 
punished offences w'ith unforgiving rigor and confounded in- 
vincible ignorance and premeditated crime. Nay, that reli- 
gion was often made abhorrent to the savages by the haughti- 



11 

ness of its teachers, who would not admit of any adaptation 
of its administration and influences to the nomadic taste and 
habits of the lords of the soil. 

One other mode of dealing with the Indians was adopted 
by a portion of the early white settlers, and has been by 
practice transmitted down to the present day, not always 
with the same amount of actual injury as formerly, but often 
with an equal liability to abuse. The improved sense of 
the community, sustained by the conduct of one small class 
of immigrants and the philanthropic teachings of the Qua- 
kers, prevented a portion of t)ie injury which might result 
to the Indians from a natural, though perhaps, not a legal 
operation of the treaty-making customs. 

The terrible inflictions which preceded some of these 
treaties, and the utter deprivation which followed, must have 
made the natives more apprehensive of the pen of the white 
man than of the sword ; and what was called a treaty by 
European emigrants must have seemed a forceful distress to 
the natives, and that which was dignified with the name of 
Peace had certainly more of destruction and solitude. Un- 
der these circumstances the Indians might well exclaim, 
"Auferre trucidare, rapare, fulsis, nominibus, imperium," if 
they had ever read Tacitus or heard of Agricola, " atque 
solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant." ' 

In strong and beautiful contrast with these various modes 
of transferring the possessions of the nations, and of alien- 
ating their aflections, is the plan adopted by the Catholic 
Pilgrims of Maryland, who acknowledge the poor Indian to 
be the proprietor of the soil, and recognize in him the form 
of the Creator and the object of the sacrifice and redemption 
of the Saviour. They saw and confessed him a man, and as 
such, Christianity as they understood it — Humanity as they 
had been taught to practice it — Paganism indeed, as ex- 
plained by the polished bondman of Rome,* forbade that the 
rights, interests, and whatever else related to those meni- 

*Terrcnce. 



12 

bers of the human family, should be alien to their own hearts. 
If they took the land of the savages, it tvas not to repay 
them with profitless gew-gaws ; nol to hold by the dead 
hand of unsatisfied contract, nor^the red hand of violence; 
not, indeed, to pay for the material and valuable possessions 
of the aboriginal planters in the cold lessons of selfish mo- 
ralit}^ or impracticable and repulsive forms of Christianity. 
They purchased the lands and paid for them. They of- 
fered peace and peaceful associations, and they presented 
the nxost attractive points of the Christian religion for the 
admiration and confidence of the Indians, viz : peace among 
themselves and kindness and justice towards others. 

Those who had left England to avoid the unjust penal 
statutes of the government and the persecuting spirit of non- 
conformists, felt how attractive must be the evidences of 
justice and how conciliating the procedure that recognizes 
in man the dignity and the rights of man. 

The Christian religion is never more exalted in the eyes 
of the pagan or skeptic than when its possessors manifest 
their high sense of its character and importance, by making 
its requirements the most distinguished of all the difference 
between men, and it is never more attractive than when all 
other distinctions are merged in that difference ; all dif- 
ferences buried in the eff"ort to make it respected by the 
virtues of its professors, and to have it adopted because of 
the gentleness and charity with which it is presented. 

The Pilgrims who came to this spot with Calvert were of 
the same country and of the same age as those who settled 
Virginia and New England. They had grown up amid the 
same contests and had had their minds moulded, their opin-^ 
ions formed in the same circumstances, as were those of the 
other contemporary colonies. If then we succeed in show- 
ing that in purity of life they excelled, in righteousness 
towards others they exceeded, and in the presentation of the 
elements of our present form of national government, they 
stood, if not alone, at least pre-eminent, we may well in- 



13 

quire — it is our duty as Americans to inquire — it is our 
privilege as religionists diligently to inquire, what Avas the 
extent and influence of their superiority, and to what prin- 
ciple it is to be referred. 

For myself, I have by reading and reflection formed an 
cpinion on that subject, and it is a part of the duty I as- 
sumed for this day to express and to support that opinion. 

I do not think that the colonists who came with Calvert 
were men of education (in the ordinary sense of that word) 
much superior to many of the settlers of Virginia. They 
were certainly not of more acute intellects than the first 
colonists of Plymouth or Massachusetts. They stood in 
the same relation to the savages as did the other colonists 
with regard to the danger from violence or the advantages 
of peace. They had the means of vitiating the physical ap- 
petites of the Indians as abundant as others ; and could have 
used cunning (I say not fraud) to become owners of the soil, 
and could have appealed to the love of finery or the thirst of 
revenge to limit the possessions of the natives or diminish 
their number. But they did not resort to these modes, 
which distinguished the conduct of some other colonists, 
and their forbearance was not the consequence of impaired 
appetite for possession, or a deficiency of means to enforce 
a wrong. In all these circumstances, in all their antecedents 
these settlers stood on the same ground of power, the same 
.strength of desire, the same means of appreciation as did the 
English immigrants to other colonies of this country. The 
difference in conduct was great, it was eminently distinguish- 
ing. Whence did it come ? 

The only difference in the circumstances of the colonists 
of Maryland, and those of Virginia and New England, the 
only operative difference was in their religious creed, and 
the educational influences immediately and necessarily re- 
sulting therefrom, combined with the painful experience to 
which that creed had exposed them, and the lofty motives 
of purity and justice which the Christian religion supplies to 



14 

all its followers, at all times, but which it suggests with great 
cogency when it also exposes them to the persecution of a 
tyrant king, or a thoughtless infuriate populace. 

There is scarcely a more beautiful page in history, sacred 
or profane, than that which records the dealings of Leonard 
Calvert and his followers with the aborigines who tilled the 
soil on which we stand. He landed not as a proprietor, but 
as a visiter. He addressed the native chief, not as one who 
came to conquer, but as one who came to purchase. His 
manners were not those which offended first and then irri- 
tated to hostility. They awakened caution, but they con- 
ciliated esteem and secured confidence. 

When the intrigues of an enemy in disguise provoked a 
portion of the savages to war, the followers of Calvert made 
it a duty of the colonists to restore lands acquired by con- 
quest, and made it a penal offence to kidnap or sell a friend- 
ly Indian, and a high misdemeanor to supply them with 
intoxicating liquor. Surely in these arrangements not only 
is there manifested the true spirit of Christianity with the 
fruits of charity and justice, but we must find in them some- 
thing which appeals to our approval more than does the con- 
duct of some of the other colonists ; and I may as well add 
that the difference in the conduct of Calvert and that of the 
Governors of the other colonies was noticed at the time, 
and an old contemporary writer says '' Justice Popham and 
Sir George Calvert agreed not more unanimously in the 
public design of planting than they differed in the private 
way of it. The first was for extirpating heathens; the 
second for converting them. The one was for present 
profit, the other for reasonable expectation. The first set 
up a common stock out of which the people should be pro- 
vided by proportions. The second left every one to provide 
for himself" 

This is not the time nor the place to pursue at length a 
comparison between the different modes of colonizing, adopt- 
ed by men of different objects. 



15 

Where entire dominancy and sudden profits are expected, 
the utter destruction of the conquered race is the policy of 
the victor. Wherever christianizing and humanizing our 
fellow^ being are the leading motives, there patient endurance, 
and the delay of fruition of hopes and the reward of labors, 
are the duties and the compensation of the conquering or 
dominant race. 

Favor to the original inhabitants is a diminution of spoils ; 
and the exercise of Christian graces and the presentation of 
Christian example insure the postponement, if not the de- 
struction of the largest expectation of the conquerors. 

Strike down the pagan Indian by tribes and nations, and 
do you not open the way for the Christian white man ? Spare 
the miserable idolater because he may have a soul, and like 
the good Las Casas you hinder if not defeat the end of con- 
quest. Civilization seeks the extension of her arts by the 
destruction of her opponents and the distribution of her 
professed followers ; Christianity seeks extent not so much 
by the cultivation of the field as the purification of the 
heart; and she often delays the gratification of cupidity in 
newly acquired territory by a postponement of the advan- 
tages of trade to the benefits of salvation, and amidst the 
eagerness of the white man for the profit and power, she 
pauses to recognize the claims of the red man to life and im- 
mortality. The colonist leader leans upon the charter or 
treaty that grants the possession of flood and field to him 
and his fellow colonists, and he must secure it. The Chris- 
tian missionary considers the redemption of his Saviour as 
wrought for all and he regards it as his duty to apply it. — 
The one certainly promotes business and populates a colony. 
The other secures salvation and peoples heaven. 

Two other important views of the subject enter into the 
plan of this discourse. First, the connection of the form 
and administration of the early colonial government of Ma- 
ryland with the democratic theory of our national govern- 
ment, and the great provisions of our constitution. 



16 

And secondly, and especially those negative provisions 
which always concern the rights of a people whose theory 
is that of self-government, and these are eminently worthy 
of notice, because these negative provisions are not what the 
government may do, not the establishment and definition of 
the duties of that government towards itself and towards 
other nations, but they are the restrictions upon the power 
of government, the true distinction between the privileges of 
the government and the inalienable rights of the citizen, not 
even how much the government ought to protect and defend, 
but a clear statement of those reserved points, which it 
would be an outrage by the government, upon the people, 
to oppose; which it would be an insult by the government to 
the people to attempt to protect. 

There are personal rights so sacred to every man, that 
even the form of protection is an outrage. There are things 
too sanctified in their character or uses, for protection or 
defence ; so blended with the character of one Government 
as to be inoperative or offensive in another, and yet above 
all assault from abroad, as they are above all defence at 
home — as the Jewish ark brought disease and disasters to 
the Philistines, who dared assault it, and death to the He- 
brews who reached forth in its support. That sanctity be- 
longs to religious creeds in our country, and is fully recog- 
nized in the Constitution, in the first place by withholding 
from the Government«the right to apply any religious test to 
candidates for office, and thus are the professors of any 
single creed saved from the outrage of direct proscription. 
And in the second place, it is provided for in that sacred in- 
strument, that no legislation shall be had by which individu- 
als of any creed shall be specially favored, nor any form of 
worship established or prescribed. 

While we admire the beautiful theory of the Government 
which thus manifests itself in the fundamental law of the 
nation, we may, without inquiring into the neglect or viola- 
tion of these principles and provisions, look back and find 



17 

in llie theory and practice of the first colonial government 
of Maryland the only precedents for such provisions — pre- 
cedents, I mean, not merely in the idle declamation ; not 
merely in pompous assertion, Utapian schemes — but prece- 
dents which rest on the plan and ample fulfilment of that 
plan b}^ men who knew that the theory which they pro- 
mulged was unfashionable, who knew that while the oppo- 
site plans of government were excluding them from the 
protection and political benefits of all the other colonies, 
their own plan was exposing them to the imminent risk of 
persecution and disfranchisement in their only colony. 

It is to be remarked of the history of the colonies of 
which our Union was formed, that almost every one claims 
to have owed its existence to persecution at home, and al- 
most every one made intolerance a leading feature of its 
own government. And it is still more remarkable that not 
one of those colonies was formed by immigrants who had 
left their country on account of the intolerance of Roman 
Catholics. Nor is this all ; while almost every colony owes 
its existence to Protestant intolerance, none but Maryland, 
the only Catholic colony of them all, attempted to practice 
religious liberty. She proclaimed universal liberty to every 
sect and division of sect that professed a belief in Jesus 
Christ, and knowing that France had contributed to the 
amount of our colonial population by the violence of a 
Catholic government against its Protestant subjects, she 
opened her heart, and her fields also, to their ingress, and as 
the peculiarity of their position might make them doubtful 
of their welcome, she passed a special law inviting fugitive 
Huguenots to come and enjoy in Catholic Maryland the 
freedom to worship God, which had been denied to them in 
France. 

At the present moment, when it is the object of political 

proscriptionists to conceal or deny the existence or display 

of virtues in members of the Catholic Church, we hear it 

gravely asserted that the tolerance, the christian liberty that 

2 



18 

distinguished the laws and government of the Maryland 
colony, was due to the respect which those colonists and 
the noble proprietary owed to the feelings and wishes of the 
Protestant monarch of England. If such an explanation of 
the motives of the various colonies with regard to tolerance 
or intolerance be admitted, it will prove too much. It may 
indeed deprive the Catholics of some portion of the credit 
for voluntary tolerance claimed in their behalf, but it makes 
it fairly inferable that the Protestant government made it 
not only a sine qua ?ion that Catholics should not disturb 
Protestants, but Protestants should persecute Catholics, as 
some of the Protestant colonies enacted laws against sects 
differing from the dominant religious party, and the most of 
them even when a little charitable to Protestants of different 
views fixed their canons against Roman Catholics, and some 
of the children of persecution themselves assigned as a reason 
for intolerance, the special hostility of the British govern- 
ment to the Papists, and the necessity of accommodating 
themselves and their laws to the wishes of the king and the 
home government. 

The Catholic colony, according to a certain class of 
modern commentators, was charitable and tolerant out of 
fear of the king, while the Protestant colonies were intoler- 
ant and persecuting from love of the king. I admit of 
neither. I demand that each colony be judged by its own 
acts without any reference to the imaginary wishes of the 
parent government, and 1 do this the more earnestly because 
I know that whenever it suits the purpose of certain writers, 
they will make the state of the British government and the 
British king, during the early part of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the means and the motive for conduct exactly opposite 
to that imputed to the respective Catholic and Protestant 
colonies. It is just to all parties to allow to each that 
amount of credit for motives which is fairly deducible from 
their acts, and if in a period of much religious intolerance a 
colony hedges itself about with edicts of the most persecut- 



19 

I 



ing character, and inflicts penalties, pains and death on those 
whose views of Christian requirements differ from those of 
the majority, it is but just to suppose that they left the parent 
country with no disrelish for intolerance in itself, but only 
as it affected their non-conformity; and it is no less fair to 
believe that a colony which, leaving an intolerant country, 
gives freedom to religious creeds and makes it criminal to 
interfere with the diflferences of men's belief, nay, that not 
only admits to equality all that are within its borders, but 
invites to itself, as to an asylum for the oppressed, the suf- 
ferers in other colonies, — it is fair, I say, to conclude that 
such a colony has in itself a better appreciation of human 
rights and Christian freedom than exists among its intolerant 
neighbors. And I shall not, I hope, be considered as de- 
parting from the proprieties of these exercises, if I ask to 
present the facts of the tolerance or intolerance of the colo- 
nies in another light. 

It is a favorite mode of attack with some writers of all 
recent times, and especially with certain demagogues of the 
present day, and in our own country, to seize upon the facts 
of history and deduce therefrom arguments against the 
Catholic creed which these facts in no way sustain — which 
they scarcely suggest. The intolerance of certain govern- 
ments of Europe in which the Catholic religion is a part of 
the State, is made an argument against that religion, as if 
Catholicity leaned upon the State for support, and required 
intolerance for its maintenance. Though equal intolerance 
exercised by a Protestant government connected with a 
State religion, is passed over without comment, or as if 
supplying no argument against the requirements of that creed. 

Denying, as we of the Catholic Church must deny, and as 
I do now deny, that there is aught of political intolerance in 
the creed of the Catholic Church, and asserting, as I do as- 
sert, that political men, and not the religious creed, are re- 
sponsible for the evils done in the name of the Catholic faith, 
I look to no combination of Church and State to sustain my 



20 

assertion in behalf of Catholicity, and T appeal to no such 
destructive or deteriorating association to prove that Pro- 
testantism has been bellicose and intolerant. 

The colonies, whence sprang the States that constitute 
this nation, afford admirable means of judging of the char- 
acter of the religious creeds transplanted to this soil, as no 
necessity was laid upon any colony to enact laws intolerant 
of religious sects, no commands of the parent government 
fixed the religious creed of any association, or rendered 
necessary the observance of prescribed forms or ceremo- 
nies. The whole were in a remarkable degree independent, 
and therefore each may well be supposed to act upon the 
impulses or suggestions most naturally springing from its 
religious principles, without regard to considerations of 
State or of municipal benefits. Nothing can be more evi- 
dent than that the emigrants who left England to establish 
these colonies (the more needy adventurer, the money loving 
and the involuntary immigrant excepted,) made it a part of 
their plan to divest their new government of all that seemed 
to them oppressive in its character and disagreeable in its 
operations at home ; to place themselves where neither pro- 
scription nor habit rendered necessary a countenance of 
customs and laws that operate unequally, or that seemed 
by a change of circumstances, to have out-lived the necessi- 
ties of the time in which they originated, or the character 
of the age that rendered them appropriate or tolerable. 

It does not appear that all had definite views of all that 
would result from their new arrangements, or that they 
fully anticipated the harvest that was to be gathered from 
their planting, But great changes certainly tvere contem- 
plated by the leading minds — important corrections of pain- 
ful abuses. The tyranny of a few over the rights of the 
many, was to have a remedy in the political association in 
Plymouth, and no one can doubt that Lord Baltimore fore- 
ordained the religious tolerance that distinguished his colo- 
nists, and planned, for careful observation, the scheme of 



m 

justice, kindness and equality with which his people dealt 
with the Indians. What, then, is the course adopted by 
the leaders of various colonies with regard to this recur- 
rence to first principles, this divesting themselves of the 
conventionalism of ages, under social and political circum- 
stances that need have no operation on this side of the 
Atlantic — where each religious creed was allowed to pre- 
sent itself and its suggestions without the intervention of 
political influences, and to stand forth unaffected by any 
concessions to temporal power or the influence of persecu- 
tion or favoritism ? I invite the curious in history, I invite 
the searcher after truth, to investigate this subject, and to 
see what was the effect of the divers creeds upon the differ- 
ent colonies ; that they may determine which colony 
(regarded as a political body and an exponent of certain 
views or forms of government) manifested a practice which 
involved not merely the greatest good of the greatest 
number, but which invited the greatest portion of its 
members to direct action in all legislation that concerned 
the whole ; and which colony, as the professor and exponent 
of a particular religious creed, manifested the most of 
Christian charity — the most of forbearance to others; 
which allowed the exercise of the largest liberty to all, 
without making the possession or profession of any portion 
of the various creeds (which even at that day distinguished 
the Christian world,) a claim for special favor, or a bar to 
domestic quiet, social equality, and political preferment. 

It appears to me that this is a view of the subject that 
ought to be taken ; and as we seek for truth, and for truth 
only, we ought not to neglect the suggestion which the facts 
of the history of such a remarkable juncture present. I 
need not tell this audience again what were the statutes and 
ordinances of the Eastern colonies, with regard to those 
who professed religious opinions at variance with the creed 
of the dominant sect. History furnishes the record, and 
there are none to deny or doubt its correctness. And while 



as 

Quakerism, ana-Baptism, anti-nomianism, Unitarianism, or 
any other ism than that which was the distinctive ism of the 
majority, was made the cause of imprisonment, stripes, ban- 
ishment, and death in one colony, it is a lamentable truth 
that the colony formed by the persecuted, the whipped and 
the banished, excepted from the operation of its enforced 
toleration, the religious denomination that included the 
largest part of Christendom. Nay, leveled its canons of 
intolerance and prohibition against that Christian denomina- 
tion which, of all those gathered in this New World, had, 
by special enactment, proclaimed equality to all other sects, 
and which gave laws indeed to almost the only colony in 
which the persecuted persecutors could have had a resting 
place out of their own narrow confines ; aye, Rhode Island, 
the child of persecution, persecuted. The little colony 
whose inhabitants were drawn together by the sound of the 
whip and the threats of the rope, menaced other Christians 
with banishment, and devised instruments of persecution ; 
and if it did not banish, it was because by its threats it pre- 
cluded admission to tthose who, by entering the colony, 
would have become obnoxious to the penalties of her un- 
charitable statutes. 

It seems, then, as if the spirit of intolerance was a part of 
the creed that influenced some of the colonies; and, without 
going into details, we may say, that just in proportion as 
religion was made prominent in some of the colonies, did 
the hostility to those of other sects manifest itself in the 
laws and customs of the people. And whatever exception 
Pennsylvania may have formed to the evidence of general 
hatred of denomination for denomination, it is evident that 
the founder and proprietary of that colony yielded up to 
fear and expediency, what others sacrificed with a hearty 
good-will, and his dread of " Mass-houses" was superior to 
his love of tolerance. 

While the colonies in general were manifesting this settled 
hostility against those who refused to conform to the reli- 



gious creed of the majority, and especially against the 
Roman Catholics, Lord Baltimore's colony took possession 
of the grant on the Chesapeake, and commenced the work 
of government. Free from the trammels of foreign influ- 
ences, unfettered by any laws of conformity, and, as yet, 
without the vexations of inconvenient customs, he had no 
bad precedent to embarrass him, he had no favorites to re- 
ward, and no enemies to defeat or punish. The people who 
followed his brother, understood the object of their mission, 
and had received lessons of political wrongs and religious 
persecutions to make them in love with tolerance, and they 
possessed too much of the spirit of Christianity to deny to 
others what they coveted for themselves. 

The world has seen in other colonies, the effect of domi- 
nant sectaries, yielding themselves to the suggestions of 
their creeds, and it was evident that nothing had been gained 
by making any sect the repository of power. It was there- 
fore evidently the intention of Lord Baltimore to give anew 
feature to colonization, by allowing his own creed to sug- 
gest the treatment to others and to make Catholicity, 
untrammeled by state dependence, the exponent of reli- 
gious rights and the minister of political equality. Hence 
the Protestant historian* is enabled to say, " with a policy, 
the wisdom of which was the more remarkable, as it was far 
in advance of the spirit of the age, (that is, because it was 
not derived from the spirit of the age, but from the spirit of 
the Gospel,) Lord Baltimore laid the foundation of his 
province on the broad basis of freedom in religion and secu- 
rity to property. Christianity, as a part of the old common 
law of England, was established by the proprietary, with- 
out allowing any pre-eminence to any particular form of its 
exhibition." 

How truly Christian, as we all understand Christianity, as 
we hear it cited around us every day, are the views thus 
imputed to Lord Baltimore, thus entering into and influen- 

•Chalmers, as quoted by Hawkes. 



24 

cing all his plans for the colonial government. But I know 
it may be said, nay, it will be said, that the professions of 
the founder of a colony may be trulj'- admirable, while the 
experience of his colonists may be very different from the 
hopes which': these professions warranted. That the real 
intentions, indeed, of the founder and proprietor may be 
neglected by his secular officers, and the administration of 
affairs be in entire opposition to his plans. Such, it may be 
supposed, was the case in some of the colonies. Such, it is 
certain, was not the case in Maryland, while the religion of 
which the founder and most of the colonists were professors, 
was allowed its operation in the legislation of the inchoate 
state, and with a view of securing and perpetuating that 
freedom of conscience for which he labored, Cecil Calvert 
prescribed for the governor of his province, from 1 636 on- 
ward, the following oath of office : — 

" I will not, by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, 
trouble, or molest, or discumbrance any person professing 
to believe in Jesus Christ, for, or in respect to religion ; I 
will make no difference of persons in conferring offices, 
favors or rewards, for or in respect to religion, but merely 
as they shall be found faithful and well deserving, and endued 
with moral virtues and abilities ; my aim shall be public 
unity ; and if any person or officer shall molest any person 
professing to believe in Jesus Christ, on account of his 
religion, I will protect the person molested and punish the 
offender." 

Surely, the spirit of entire equality never did a more per- 
fect work than that proposed by Lord Baltimore, and 
carried out by his colonists. Persecuted at home ; oppress- 
ed with legal disabilities, and still more embarrassed with 
the annoying antagonism of a dominant party, and the initia- 
tory hostility of numerous sectaries, agreeing only in that 
hostility, those colonists manifested a spirit of Christian 
kindness that does infinite credit to the creed which they 
professed. And if subsequent observation enables some to 



2S 

say that it was the true mode of perpetuating the colony, by 
securing imnnigration to the oppressed and suffering of other 
creeds, it may be said, in reply, that the dictates of Chris- 
tianity are always the most expedient in a full experiment ; 
and we have advanced in our argument if we show a perfect 
consistency in the practice of those elements and the dic- 
tates of Christianity, and made apparent the coincidence of 
their creed with their beautiful practice. 

I have felt called on to present the action of the early 
colonist of Maryland, with regard to religious liberty, in a 
strong contrast with the facts which history presents in its 
record of the proceedings of the colonies, not because it is 
agreeable to throw a shadow over the glory of the settlers of 
other portions of this country, or that under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, such comparisons are expedient. It would be 
more agreeable to dwell on the sterling virtues of other colo- 
nists, and they had stern and sterling virtues, and to give 
them credit for a subsequent adoption of that practice which 
distinguished the Pilgrim Fathers of St. Mary's. But we 
do not, and we ought not to conceal from ourselves, or 
attempt to deny to others, that we celebrate the Landing of 
these Pilgrims — the advent of men, of a certain creed — and 
that the circumstances of the people of the various colonies 
at that time, render it easy to compare the character of the 
motives by which each community was influenced, and to 
judge of the nature and propriety of the leading principle of 
all, by the effects which that principle wrought upon the con- 
duct, wishes and legislation of the several bodies. 

And let me add that the circumstances of the present 
times fully justify the inquiry. Nay, more, those circum- 
stances render such an inquiry, and such a comparison, a 
solemn duty to ourselves and our creed, and we may regard 
this celebration as one of providential occurrence, supplying 
the opportunity and the means of a deserved and triumphant 
vindication. Not for the triumph hut for the vindication. 

In the particular instance of religious tolerance, the com- 



26 

parison is presented, not by the records of men of the 
creed of the early colonists of St. Mary's, not by men 
who, from education, association or interest, could be sup- 
posed to lean towards that unfriended creed. The history 
of all these events is from writers who are strongly hostile 
to the creed which Lord Baltimore had adopted, and in 
one instance it is presented by a historian* whose life is 
dedicated to the promulgation of the doctrines of another 
church. His work does honor to himself and his princi- 
ples, and appeals to judgment against the prejudices of the 
ignorant and the erring. 

If the peculiar characteristics of the early institutions of 
the colony are found pervading, in a superior degree, the 
theory of our national government, and the broad and 
expansive liberality of the colonial legislature is, more 
than the legislation or practice of any other colony, re- 
flected in the constitutional provisions of our general 
government, it may not be an extravagant presumption to 
conclude that these institutions, and especially that liber- 
ality, had much to do with the formation and cultivation 
of a state of policy which led to the declaration and 
achievement of national independence. I have no time 
now to trace up these effects to their natural causes, nor 
to seize upon the admitted circumstances of the Maryland 
colony, and follow them down with their constantly aug- 
menting effects, until they connect themselves (as causes 
with results) with the movements of the colonies towards 
a redress of wrongs, and then with these events which led 
to our existence as a nation, and the moulding of the 
government and the adoption of the constitution in a form 
so truly democratic in its theory. 

It is the opinion of many British writers who have 
access to American anti-revolutionary documents, that it 
was the fixed and well arranged purpose of the American 

* Dr. Hawkes, historian of the Episcopal Church in Maryland and Virginia. 



n 

colonists, at an early day, to become independent of the 
parent government. I do not possess the means of arriv- 
ing at such a conclusion ; but to me it is rather evident 
that the democratic character of the colonial governments, 
the various degrees of freedom recognized under them, 
and the habits of self-reliance inculcated and formed, 
were certain to lead to that independence, which may 
therefore be regarded as the inevitable result of peculiar 
circumstances, rather than the accomplishment of any 
preconcerted plan. Surely, it is more to the lasting 
honor of our ancestors of the early colonic?, that the 
national independence and national character were rather 
the natural results of practical virtues, of liberal princi- 
ples, adopted for the sake of their liberality, and of a lofty 
estimation of human rights, than the effect of any idea of 
rebellion first and victory afterwards. Both produce a 
nation, but each proceeds from a separate class of mo- 
tives, and each, when successful, is productive of different 
national characteristics. 

I do not now deny that our ancestors very early enter- 
tained an idea of separation from the mother country ; 
but still I doubt it. It is not quite consistent with all their 
professions. Our independence was the inevitable result 
of early circu-mstances ; and a state of feelings and a 
mode of action almost necessarily resulting from such 
circumstances ; and with that view, I think it easy to see 
how the spirit of the Pilgrims of St. Mary's co-worked 
not only to produce that great result, but also how it co- 
operated to mould the features of that result to the par- 
ticular form they presented in 1776 and 1788, and how 
they have led to the amelioration of much, which, though 
at that time it was consistent with the general feeling of 
the public, subsequently required an accommodation to the 
advances in public sentiment. We must never overlook 
the important fact that though truth is immutable in its 
character, it is altogether progressive in its influences. 



28 

And good principles operate not always to the extent of 
their goodness so much as to the capabihties and power 
of their subject, and different co-efficients express that 
power under different circumstances. He who saw " men 
as trees walking" was using the full measure of his per- 
ception, and the fullness of the grace that had wrought 
the miracle, as much as he was when he became enabled 
to direct his vision to a proper estimate of forms and dis- 
tances. It was not the principle, it was not the power 
restoring the sight that was deficient ; it was the weakness 
of the unprepared organ that was unable to accommodate 
itself to the blessing, that was in itself unable to grasp 
the full measure of the gift, but had from its own imper- 
fection to await the result of those principles w^hich had 
begun its operation. 

So while I see, and we all acknowledge an immense 
difference between the administration of Republican 
governments now, and that of the early colony of Mary- 
land, we yet can see the close relation which the former, 
as a result, bears to the latter as a cause, and we as read- 
ily discover, not merely how much these beneficial changes 
of modern times are dependent on the improvement of 
circumstances, but we also see how much that improve- 
ment is due to the character of the early government. 

The charter granted to Lord Baltimore differed essen- 
tially from those held by other proprietaries. It conveyed 
a power not usually granted ; and instead of giving Mary- 
land a mere colonial existence, it conferred on it the 
character and dignity of a palatinate. Starting at once 
with that long step in advance, it had the lead of other 
colonies in the essential properties of independence, and 
it cannot be doubted that during the time the colony was 
governed by the dynasty which founded it, it manifested 
the benefits of that incipient independence. 

In the next place, while an unusual degree of indepen- 
dence was secured to the province as a whole, the 



29 

character of the government was, to an unusual degree, 
essentially and purely democratic. The legislative power 
was in an Assembly in which was present the majesty of 
the people, not by a fiction of government or laws, but in 
very deed. The people of the province were assembled 
in person to accept, and subsequently to enact, their own 
laws, and to try the experiment of self-government, and 
when the good spirit of the new government had so con- 
ciliated the Indians as to produce a multiplication and call 
for a dispersion of the colonists, and thus to render incon- 
venient a personal attendance of the people in the grand 
Witena-Gemote of the young nation, a representative 
character was given to the legislature, but with such a 
careful regard to the great principles of democracy which 
lay at the foundation of all, that it was permitted to indi- 
viduals who did not choose to depend upon representatives 
to come themselves and present their own views, and 
advocate their own measures. 

Here was evidence of a deeply-seated reverence for 
the great principles of self-government, the sovereignty of 
the people ; and whatever changes may have occurred in 
the forms and measures of government, we cannot doubt 
that this leading characteristic of republicanism was 
always operative to prevent much of evil, and in the end 
to produce much good by reproducing itself I am aware 
that there was an earnest wish on the part of the Lord 
Proprietary to continue to originate all laws which should 
be submitted to the legislature of his colony. This was 
the practice of European national legislation at the time, 
and the theory now. (It is, I think, slowly growing into 
practice in our own Congress.) It raised a momentary 
difficulty between the legislature and the proprietary, but 
the principle of liberty which he had planted in his colony, 
and with his colony, was too potent for that remnant of 
royalty, and Lord Baltimore felt how operative, how pro- 
gressive are the principles of human rights, when freed 



30 

from the trammels of proscription and unrestrained by 
hereditary prejudices. He learned to view the question 
of government in the light in which he had himself placed 
it, and he gracefully yielded to that influence which he 
had so essentially promoted, without being able to antici- 
pate its early operation. Here is a species of territorial 
sovereignty of which we hear so much in these days. 

How beautiful ! how republican is all this ! How sternly 
true were the disciples of democracy in Maryland to the 
great lessons which they had worked out; and how grace- 
fully, nobly yielding, was the proprietary in England to the 
circumstances which his own principles, means and labors 
had produced. Perhaps he had not thought of that con- 
sequence of his ideas of human rights and his efforts for 
their establishment. Human greatness does not consist 
in foreseeing all events or in discerning in the future the 
full effects of the correct principles which are put into 
operation. The great man is not he who knows all the 
good which his measures may produce ; it is rather he 
who yields to the results, which the operation of his good 
principles by good measures makes evident; and it seems 
to me that the beautiful spirit of freedom and equality 
which influenced the founders of this colony is discerni- 
ble — is to be seen at work — in the establishment of our 
national government. The unyielding spirit of right 
manifested by the colonial legislators, was reproduced in 
the steady, stern demand of the rebellious colonies in the 
later days, and that the graceful relinquishment of power 
by the noble proprietary was the illustrious example that 
was lost in the sovereign of Great Britain, but which was 
found in the concessions of rights, feelings, prejudices and 
interests that distinguished the different believers when 
they made themselves " one out of many." 

I have already more than once called your attention to 
the close resemblance of the provisions of the constitution 
of our country to the great principles of religious equality 



31 

that distinguished the early action of this colony. If 
there is one thing that specially distinguishes our national 
government from those of every other country on earth, 
it is that pervading principle of toleration and religious 
equality which is proclaimed in the Constitution, not as a 
simple assertion, but as a memorial of perpetuity ; and if 
there was one thins more than another which distinoruished 
the colony of Maryland from all the other colonies of the 
country, it was that entire religious equality before the 
State, before the court, before the people. 

If our country claims a pre-eminence over other nations 
in the mode of treating barbarian conquests, it is in the 
treaties which she makes with, and the largesses she 
bestows upon the Indians, and that superiority is usually 
conceded by those who know the circumstances of the 
conqueror and the conquered. How pre-eminent in the 
history of colonial dealings with the aborigines, is the 
merciful conduct of a colonist of Maryland, who, though 
constrained by religious scruples on the subject of war, 
and powerful in means offensive and defensive, so lived 
with the red lords of the soil, so commended themselves 
and their interests to these true owners, that the spirit of 
brotherly affection was as operative between the two 
races as among the individual of the favored caste. I 
will not say that to the spirit of justice and charity which 
animated the colonists of Lord Baltimore, is the nation 
indebted for the credit she claims for the good which was 
done, and the evils forborne, towards the various tribes of 
Indians that are brought under our national limits ; but 
this I may say, without incurring the charge of assumption, 
that if the nation had needed an example of righteous 
dealing with the red iften, she would have found it in the 
early history of that colony. 

I feel thus authorized to say that the early colony of 
Maryland presented to the government of tjie United 
States, the biest example of republican simplicity in its 



32 

form and action of government; that it afforded the 
loftiest example of religious tolerance and equality that 
was ever presented ; and that in the treatment of the 
Indians, its conduct was that of surpassing righteousness; 
and as these were constantly and heartily practiced in 
that period, it is fairly deducible that the founders of the 
government of this nation were largely and effectively 
influenced by these examples, and hence to these ex- 
amples in their effect on the minds of others, do we owe, 
in part, the recognition and the security by constitutional 
provisions of some of the rights dearest to us as men, as 
patriots, as Christians, and some of the practices of those 
national virtues which concern us as philanthropists. 

To the early colony of Maryland is our government in- 
debted for the development of some of the best principles 
that distinguish our institutions and do honor to their 
operation, and that colony owed these principles and her 
determination and -ability to give them practice, to that 
pure and undefiled rehgion which the colonists brought 
with them from the persecutions and the more dangerous 
favors in Europe, to establish its altars here, and to pro- 
claim life and immortality to its professors, and unbounded 
love and unrestrained equality to all who should profess a 
belief in its divine Founder. Honor and fame to the self- 
saciificino; Pilgrims that thus came to the new world to 
give full operation to the pure principles of Christianity ! 
Honor and reverence to the venerable and reverend 
" Fathers" who led the Pilgrims who erected an altar, 
lighted its incense and offered its victim ; who poured 
back the light of truth upon their faithful followers, and 
sent forward its rays to the eye of the astonished pagan ; 
who made the work of conquest honorable to the con- 
queror and acceptable to the conquered ; who showed 
their confidence in their own creed by recommending full 
indulgence to the creed of others ! Honor to the venera- 
ble Fathers who recommended their religion by active 



33 

benevolence, and invited the red man to the adoption 
of the Christian faith by the beauty of the white man's 
practice. 

Our orators and our poets have lauded the motives and 
celebrated the perseverance of the Pilgrim Fathers of St, 
Mary's. They have noted the perils of the sea which 
they incurred in the little vessels when [^they left their 
homes in England to cross the Atlantic in the months of 
winter, and the historians have carefully portrayed the 
terrors of the storms encountered, and the dangers from 
the merciless foes that infested the seas at that time. All 
of us have heard of the sufferings of those fathers, of the 
sympathy manifested by those of the tempest tossed Ark — 
for those on board the defenceless Dove. All of us have 
read of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers on a neighbor- 
ing island, and how, true to their faith, they celebrated its 
holy mysteries of the altar, and erected, as a memorial of 
that faith, and as a token of their hopes, a simple cross 
or imitation of the " world's redeeming wood." Besides, 
also, we follow these Pilgrim Fathers upward on the Po- 
tomac, and backward again to the sanctified spot on which 
we now celebrate their landing, and commemorate the 
virtues which they imparted and cherished. 

Graham, a writer of great purity of motive, says, mis- 
taking here and there some of the minor facts, the first 
band of emigrants, consisting of about two hundred o-en- 
tlemen of considerable rank and fortune, with a number 
of inferior adherents, in the vessels called the Dove and 
Ark, sailed from England under the command of Leonard 
Calvert, and reached the coast of Maryland in the begin- 
ning of the following year." 

Hawkes speaks of the arrival of these " two hundred 

gentlemen of rank and fortune," of their faithful and 

Christian-like commencement of the province which they 

came to found. 

Chalmers, another historian, speaks of the immigration 
3 



34 

of the Fathers of this State, and lauds their character 
and their conduct 

Wherever we find a record of the settlement of Mary- 
land, we meet with accounts of proceedings which do 
honor to the " few hundred gentlemen of the first char- 
acter," who came in the Ark and Dove, or who succeed- 
ed in places and duties those distinguished men, but no 
one has paused to tell of the Pilgrim Mothers. Great 
dangers were encountered by those gentlemen in crossing 
the Atlantic in a small vessel, but was there exemption 
from danger and from suflfering for the women ? Was 
there nothinor in the crowded state of those small vessels 
to make almost unavoidable, great physical sufferings to 
well born and well educated ladies ? and to shock female 
delicacy, even more than deprivation could injure and 
tempest and pirates affright ? In the organization of the 
domestic circle when they had arrived, and in its extension, 
was nothing due to woman ? When the altar was reared 
in its fragile temple,* was there no female there to give 
to it the beauty of holiness ? none to gather around the 
simple sanctuary as woman once clung around the cross 
on Calvary to make more impressive the august sacrifice ? 
When Tayac, the king, bowed his head to baptism, he, 
of course, owed his conviction to the instruction of the 
reverend teachers ; but when his queen came to the sacred 
font, had she not been invited by the gentle precepts and 
attractive examples of the female pilgrims ? Or, if the 
argument of the priest or the example of the husband 
were alone operative upon the wife, who taught their 
princess daughter to profess the creed, receive the sacra- 
ments and illustrate the doctrines of Christianity ? That 
was alone the office of woman; nameless, fameless, per- 
haps, but ever the missionary of benevolence, piety and 
purity. 

The holy religion of those pilgrims, which in its first 

* The Indian Wigwam. 



35 

proclamation had released woman from the degradation 
of pagan condition, made her the co-worker in the great 
mission of domestic and social piety ; endowing her with 
all the dignity of recognized co-operation in the office of 
Christianity ; and, though sparing her the burthen of 
sacramental labors, yet honoring her with the passive dis- 
tinction of the baptism of sorrow in herself, and the 
commission to lead up others to all the blessings that fol- 
low virtue, and all the dignity that is conferred by religion. 

Why, then, have we no record of the sufferings endured 
in themselves, and lessened in others, by the women who 
commenced the work of regenerating this colony ? They 
were there, else whence the gentle sentiments that per- 
vaded all the public acts, and social and business inter- 
course of the Fathers. They were there, and though we 
know them not by their names, nor by the special mention 
of their usefulness, yet we discover their influence in the 
growth, the piety, and the constant peace of the early 
colony. We find woman there in all her sex's fullest dig- 
nity, by the perpetuation of the names of those who first 
landed. She was there in all her sex's gentleness, to 
mould the manners and direct the conduct of those whose 
courage have given fame to Maryland, and whose genius 
has augmented her scientific and literary character. She 
was there in all her sex's holiest influences, to prepare the 
messengers and ministers of love and philanthropy for the 
duties of the convent cell and the sacrifices and devotion 
of the pestilential hospital. She was there in all her sex's 
loftiest office, to fill the sanctuary with the dispensers of 
the august mysteries of our faith, and to prepare them to 
wear the mitre and wield the crozier with dignity and 
grace, and to deserve the tiara by their learning, their 
piety, and their devotion. 

Why, then, is woman, in such a commemoration, unre- 
cognized .'* While leaders and teachers, warriors and 
philanthropists of the other sex are celebrated, why are 



36 

women, their companions in dangers and in triumphs, un- 
noticed ? I cannot tell, unless their modesty forbade them 
to chronicle their own worth, and an unworthy motive led 
the historians to make prominent only the names and 
deeds of the fathers. Special and extraordinary acts we 
know are those which strike the public mind and obtain a 
place in general history, while continual usefulness so 
connects itself with the daily experience of man, as to 
become unnoticed by its benefits. Woman is always in 
the discharge of that mission. Man, at best, is only " in- 
stant in season." Man's office is like the offering of the 
laity of Israel, which was yearly, only, but generous ; 
woman's is like the sacrifice of the Christian Church, 
daily, small indeed, but precious clear and pure. 

Yes ! woman was here in all her sex's sweetest offices, 
to perpetuate her own virtues in her own sex, to insure 
innocence, purity and loveliness to the virgin, dignity and 
grace to the matron, and benignity and charity in the aged, 
to mould them to all the perfection of the female char- 
acter, and to make this portion of the colony, dedicated 
in its name to the Mother of God, redolent with all the 
odors that exhale from her purity, her piety and her grace. 

If not by special act, if not by the record of extraordi- 
nary endurance, if not by commemorated courage or em- 
balmed affection, are the names of these Pilgrim Mothers 
of St. Mary's to find a place in the history and commemo- 
ration of the foundation of Maryland, yet we cannot fail 
to recognize in all the graces that enrich the State, and 
all the virtues that have gone forth hence to bless other 
portions of our Union, the emanations from woman's 
peculiar excellence and the exercise of her pecuhar vir- 
tues. Virtues such as these, demand from the philanthro- 
pist, the patriot and the Christian, the most grateful 
recognition : especially do they appeal to us who celebrate 
here where they were so beneficially developed ; but their 
best celebration and their perfect reward are alone in 
heaven. 



37 

Gentlemen of the Philodemic Society, though the 
task which I assumed may not have been accomphshed, 
yet the time for its completion has passed, and it will be 
permitted to me only to close my address with that special 
reference to the occasion which the festivity would seem 
to demand, and to your society, which, holding the com- 
memoration of events, keeps alive their remembrance, and 
thus commends to practice these Christian virtues, which 
are the glory of the Pilgrim Fathers of Maryland. Your 
association is the archilridanos of this commemorative 
marriage feast of truth and piety. Let our zeal for reli- 
gion, and our love for truth, and our affections for our 
fellow men, show that the great Author of truth has been 
invited^ and that the Immaculate Mother of purity is here 
in our remembrance. 

The ground on which we stand is holy ; the foot-prints 
of the good are on its sands, and its soil is enriched with 
the ashes from the sanctified thurible. The line that 
sweeps round this limited horizon, includes a space whence 
history draws her most attractive record, and presents 
scenes where indeed the purity of the nation and the 
beneficence of the act seem to invest the genius of history 
with the spirit of inspiration, and enables us to find be- 
neath the simplicity of secular narration the means of 
spiritual instruction. 

Grateful to the heart of every visiter here must be the 
hospitality that makes our celebration a double festivity. 
This is the land of bountiful hospitality. The character- 
istics of the earliest settlers were domestic, social and 
municipal hospitality. And whatever change may have 
come over the creed or character of the country, the direct 
inheritance of hospitality is unbroken. Fields are here, 
as of old, improved by culture, and streams made minis- 
trant to trade. Faith and freedom, the boast of the 
Pilgrim Fathers, are yet the attributes of the sons ; and 
piety and beauty, which made lustrous the cabin chambers 



38 

of the Pilgrim Mothers, now give charms to the stately 
mansions of their lovely daughters; and all that was the 
special and peculiar attributes of the Pilgrims of St. 
Mary's city, has become the general possession, the prin- 
ciple and practice of the people of the commonwealth. 

Beautifully appropriate to the circumstance of the 
objects celebrated, are the character and condition of 
those who maintain the celebration. Men of condition, 
of learning and character, directed and formed the civili- 
zation of Maryland. Most meet is it, then, that the halls 
of classical learning should supply the guardians of the 
annual festival, and since the " Fathers" of a learned and 
laboring religious order, were the companions and guides 
of the great exodus, meet is it that the influence of that 
order should be felt, and the presence of its members 
enjoyed in the solemnities that commemorate the entry 
into the promised land. 

Since woman shared in the dangers and in the glories 
of the enterprise, woman is appropriately a part of the 
memorial which this day presents ; not by her presence to 
give attraction to the celebration of man's achievements, 
but to be the representative of the principles and of the 
sex that gave order and ornament to the early colony. 
Like the caratides of palatial architecture, to support and 
beautify the edifice. 

Eminently appropriate, also, is the presence of those of 
various creeds in this celebration, which, though it is sus- 
tained by the professors of that faith which was held by 
the founder of Maryland, and most of his colonists, is 
intended as a commemoration of social and political 
virtues which are universal in their character, and may 
be, and have been, practiced by men of all creeds. God 
forbid that, in celebrating the beautiful example of Chris- 
tian virtues of those who are of our own faith, we should 
do injustice to the merits of those who profess a different 
faith. God forbid that in pursuing a comparison which 



39 

wc think results in favor of our own creed, wc should 
presume tliat those who profess a faith in Jesus Christ, 
are unmindful of the works which should illustrate that 
faith. Rather, while we meet the spirit of unfriendliness 
towards ourselves that pervades the social atmosphere at 
the present time, and seek by comparison and example, to 
avoid a reproach that is cast upon us, and enlighten the 
careless and unforgetful upon the facts of history, let us 
so manifest our rehgion that we shall win the love of those 
who have looked coldly on us, and regain the confidence 
of those who have doubted. The viper has come from 
the fire indeed, which we helped to kindle for general 
benefit, and it has fastened upon our hand. But let us 
show the power of innocence by casting the repti'e, not 
upon those who expect our injury, but back into the fire, 
that it may perish in the flame whence it issued. 

If we complain of the spirit of hostility that is abroad, 
let us ask if it be worse than that which scattered the 
sectaries of various creeds, and compelled those of our 
own faith to seek refuge in this asylum. Do v/e need an 
example of duty in the present emergency ? Look back 
upon the conduct of the founder of this colony, who, amid 
scenes of violence against himself and his, calmly put in 
operation his plan of Christian benevolence, and, while 
segments of parties pursued each other with implacable 
hatred, he manifested the beauty of his own principles, by 
opening to these mutual opponents his own colony, as a 
refuore from each other's antao-onism. He could not have 
been unmindful of the dangers which such a course 
rendered probable, nor have failed to foresee the very 
political evils which ensued, but where right and danger 
are the only alternative, the good man has no hesitancy in 
his choice. 

The piety, the forbearance, the enlarged views of right 
that distinguished the plans of the founders of Maryland, 
and which are illustrated in the practice of the earliest 



40 

colonist, are no less our duties than .they were theirs ; and 
oh ! how rriuch more easily practiced are all those virtues 
now. And the celebration of this day would be imperfect, 
would lack the spirit which would make it acceptable to 
God and honorable to us, if it recalled a single virtue of 
our Catholic Fathers, merely to gratify the pride of their 
successors, or if it selected a single error of their separated 
contemporaries, only to generate a feeling of unkindness in 
the present generation. 

Oh ! here on this chosen spot — here on this sanctified 
ground — here let there be prevalent no sentiment but that 
of love to God, and love to our fellow man. Here where 
the red man received the Pilgrim Fathers with tokens of 
friendship and favor, and where men of other creeds wel- 
come us to-day to our celebration — here may the spirit of 
Calvert pervade all those who commemorate his virtues and 
bis triunij «, and may the Spirit of God animate all of every 
name and every creed. 



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